Isaac Newton was born on Dec. 25, 1642, in Woolsthorpe, England. His father died before he was born, and when he was only three his mother, Hannah Newton, remarried and moved away, leaving him to be raised by an uncle. He was sent to the local grammar school, and for a time it was expected that he would grow up to manage his mother's property. But he nonetheless persisted in the pursuit of his wider interests, and after leaving the grammar school he enrolled at Trinity College, at the University of Cambridge, in 1661. He received his bachelor of arts in 1665, and was named a fellow of the College two years later.
Principia made Newton an English celebrity. He was elected to Parliament in 1691, and after surviving a nervous breakdown in 1693, was appointed warden of the mint in 1696, and master of the mint three years later. He was elected president of the Royal Society in 1703, upon the death of Hooke, and was knighted in 1705. As his fame grew, he worked to buttress his own reputation, bringing the Society under his tight control and carrying on a feud with the German mathematician Leibniz over the issue of who had developed calculus first. Newton never married, and was tremendously pious: he dedicated his later years to the interpretation of scripture, and a mighty effort to understand the relationship between biblical prophecy and history. He died on March 20, 1727, and was buried with great honors in Westminster Abbey.